Mumbai, Jul 09, 2022, IANS

Mumbai, July 9 (IANS) Former India cricketer Wasim Jaffer is mighty impressed with pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar's performance in the opening T20 International against England, which the visitors won by 50 runs at Southampton on July 7.

While Hardik Pandya hogged the limelight with his all-round show of scoring a half century and taking four wickets to rip apart England's top order, Bhuvneshwar took the prized wicket of newly-appointed captain Jos Buttler, who was dismissed first ball for a duck.

Buttler was welcomed with a searing in-swinger, which landed on off and jagged back in sharply. The skipper tried a late flick but the ball beat his defences to get past the pads and shatter the leg stump.

Bhuvi kept swinging the ball both ways, conceding just 10 runs in his three overs with a superb economy rate of 3.33. Jaffer felt the bowler would make merry on any surface, not just the helpful wickets in England, and added that Bhuvi needs to be in the India squad for the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia in October-November this year.

"In international cricket, a bowler who swings the ball will have most of the batters struggling, especially with the ball you don't see many bowlers swinging it but Bhuvi is a great exponent of it," Jaffer was quoted as saying by royalchallengers.com.

"He's (Bhuvi) been getting it right since he has come back to the side and it was great to see him producing a good performance against a quality batting line-up. I don't see any doubt in my mind that he's going to be in the World Cup squad. He's an absolute certainty," added Jaffer.

Former England spinner, Ashley Giles too echoed similar sentiments. "Will the ball swing as much in Australia? I don't know but if anybody swings, it will be Bhuvi. I think he has inked his name into that World Cup squad already," said Giles.

India's pace-bowling trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and Bhuvneshwar, if included in the squad, could be the combination the Rohit Sharma-led side needs to win only their second T20 World Cup.